Springtime has arrived in Paris, complete with spontaneous April showers and pretty purple blossoms in the trees. In the course of this afternoon alone, it's gone from sunny and warm to cold and rainy at least twice. Overall it's been getting warmer (not California status), which is a welcome change. Hard to believe that not too long ago I would not think of leaving the house without the scarf/hat/glove ensemble.
Last week consisted of frantically finishing schoolwork that had (intentionally) gone untouched the week before. I had a 10-page paper for my english IR theory class due on Tuesday, a small paper for my french class, and an exposé for one of my french classes to prepare for Friday, which ended up being moved to Wednesday (tomorrow). It all got done though, and not horribly either. Despite having to pull an all-nighter to finish it, my english paper ended up being almost fun to write because having completed a paper from hell the week before Spring Break in French, I suddenly had all the confidence in the world when writing in English. And it kind of seem like, even though I usually don't feel like I'm getting a lot out of lectures (considering teachers don't really teach here but rather subcontract that job to all their eager students in the form of exposés), I do think I've done a good job of getting the most I can out of my assignments, insofar as I've tried to tailor them to what I study at home and what I'm interested in. My scary exposé a while back was about human rights, I wrote my IR paper essentially about UN reform, and for my exposé for my french class about resistance movements, I chose to talk about the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina (which my teacher enthusiastically okay'd even though I was unsure if he'd be on board). All subjects that have been touched upon in my classes at Berkeley and that I've been able to explore more here. Not a bad setup!
My spring break was WONDERFUL and just what I needed. I just put up lots of pictures on Picasa and I was more diligent about providing captions so I wouldn't need to go into too much detail here (http://picasaweb.google.com/rsevenlima - there are also two new Paris albums). I loved Dublin and I honestly learned tons about Irish history while I was there (considering I knew about zilch before I went). My friend Matt who is a bit of a history buff and of Irish origin (like Katie and everyone else I hung out with in Dublin!), as well as a literary pub crawl (where you go along with these two Irish actors to different pubs and they perform scenes and give you historical facts--highly recommended!) helped with this. There was also pub-hopping, of course, where I discovered my taste for Guinness (at least the Irish kind-I hear it's different elsewhere), as well as that Irish people are ridiculously friendly. You get "cheers" from random people and I was the victim of more than one anonymous hug. One place we went to had live music all the time (featured briefly in the video below!) and it was really fun. Dublin is a tiny city, Katie wasn't joking when she assured me I shouldn't worry about seeing all of it in a couple days. But it's definitely somewhere I'd pay a visit to again.
Bristol was much bigger than I expected, on the other hand, and although it seemed like a cool place to live I didn't see much of it in the day and a half that I was there. Plus, Yael and I went to Bath on one of the days, which is about 20 minutes away by train. More unexpected (but very welcome) history lessons followed.
Finally London to visit Stacy and spend more time with the Dubliners (Katie, Matt, and his friend Andy) who made it over that weekend for the Van Morisson concert. We saw a lot for the limited time we were there, even though higher priority for me was getting a feel for Stacy's life there--which I did (and it's wonderful to see her thrive). London is definitely my kind of city and I felt a slight twinge of sadness at the fact that I didn't have time to bum around for a bit longer. But even though I started to get a little bit of the end-of-vacation (and oh-shit-I-have-to-write-a-ten-page-paper-tomorrow) depression on the last day, there was NOTHING like coming "home" to Paris the next afternoon. Boy, was that an amazing feeling. I was all smiles on the RER home.
I had a great time on my trip exploring the current homes of my friends but of course, the best part about it was getting to spend time with some of my favorite people, and I know we would have had fun regardless of where we were. And amazing to see my girls again (granted one of us was missing) and get that wonderful borderline-panicked feeling where I'm not sure if I'll be able to withstand my laughter ("Man, I forgot what it was like when you three get together," as Matt said). I already knew it but it's always nice to be reminded that I have the best friends in the world.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Thursday, April 2, 2009
La vie est belle
It's been quite a while and there is a whole hell of a lot to share, I will try to stick with highlights. In the last couple weeks I've had the fortune of housing various visitors and meeting up with a number of people from Berkeley, which means I've had the opportunity to revisit some more touristy parts of Paris as well as explore new ones. Katie visited from Dublin two weekends ago and I had a great time showing her around. We did A LOT for three days but of course, it was very short all in all. The next week my friend Yael (from Berkeley) and her friend who I didn't know before, Stevie, visited from Bristol where they are both studying for the semester. The first few days I didn't see them much as I had to quarantine myself to work on my exposé for that Wednesday (the preparation for which was grueling and terrifying), and they happily did their own tour of Paris' attractions. I worked really hard on my exposé and was quite nervous about it, but by the night before I was feeling fine, ready for it to be done, and Allie came over and made us dinner and we even had a mini dance-party in our living room. The next morning my very first Sciences Po exposé went relatively smoothly, and I was able to talk as fast as I needed to to make it in the time limit and really did not feel very nervous once I was actually up there. A kid did ask me a question after that I didn't understand, which I was afraid of (seriously, I'm foreign, talk SLOWLY), but even that worked itself out somehow. The teacher seemed to appreciate my effort and besides some general criticisms said I did a good job. I must say that overall I was academically invigorated by the whole exposé process even though it had been difficult to find inspiration in my classes here, and I was really lucky because my topic, "the diplomacy of human rights," is related to what I study at home and in doing research I was reminded how much I care about this issue.
That same day I had three MUN people (who were supposed to be at a conference in the Hague) visiting Paris for the day who were hoping I could show them around (they had never been and so understandably wanted to do the big tourist attractions) and although I was a bit touristed-out and sleep-deprived, I felt like I'd been cooped-up for days in my apartment doing schoolwork so I was more than happy to run around with them and feel like I was doing something. We literally did Paris in a day, hours even, I'm surprised at how much we saw. And there were things I hadn't done before, like I figured out how to find this one bus I like in a different location and we stopped in St-Sulpice church (perhaps better-known, sadly, as the Da Vinci Code church), and also stopped for a café near the école militaire (which faces the Eiffel Tower) in an area I hadn't visited before. At around 4 o'Clock we were by the Louvre (I advised them not to go in if they didn't have time to avoid collapsing in awe, advice they heeded) and I sent them off to Montmartre so they could see the Sacre Coeur before catching their train in the same area, at which point I went home and collapsed on the couch in content exhaustion.
As if to compensate for all the schoolwork I did earlier in the week I spent the weekend doing absolutely nothing for school and instead spending time with Yael and Stevie who I really enjoyed talking to. Stevie left Thursday, though (they are both off now completing their European tour while on break from school), and on Friday Yael and I went to Versailles which I've been wanting to go to, and which was amazing besides the fact that it was a very cold day so the gardens were not quite as pleasant as they might have been. But this was yet another instance here where I've been so glad I took a 17th to beginning 20th century European history class at Berkeley (which had been a relatively random decision). Nothing like writing a whole midterm on the Sun King who "loved war too much" and changed the face of diplomacy in Europe and then seeing the bed where he was born. Pretty cool! In the evening we met up with our friend Pedro (also an MUN kid, technically) who I've known since Freshman year and who is studying in Germany for the semester (in Paris for the weekend with his program). We had a really nice time catching up over dinner and it was great to see another familiar face.
On Saturday we went to the Andy Warhol exhibit that is going on at the Grand Palais that both Yael and I had wanted to see. It was really cool and although I didn't know a whole lot about Warhol at first I felt like I had a pretty good sense of his life and work by the time I left. A lot of his mirror-image-type portraits that are normally found in different museums were put side-by-side which made me feel pretty lucky that I could see them there at the same time. I'm not sure about his idealization of celebrities and business executives, or his use of diamond dust in a few paintings, but it was very interesting nonetheless and definitely worthwhile. Yael left on Saturday night, officially ending my week of familiar faces! It was wonderful to have visitors here, especially because it's then you feel truly like a Paris resident and you realize you know much more than you think you do about where you are.
I decided Sunday during the day was finally the right time to get back to school stuff (considering I had a paper due the next day I hadn't started), but I still made time to meet up with people at a jazz club near Odéon for Song-My's birthday. The music was fantastic and I had a great time. Even though it is usually the case in Berkeley I've made the decision that while I'm here, school cannot be first priority. There's just too much to see and too much to do and I think I learn much more outside of school anyway. It is difficult to find a balance but I think I am getting there.
And in between the SCHOOL v. FUN seesaw there are so many simple pleasures to enjoy (which are always important to be aware of, but in Paris it's that much easier for some reason). Getting a "tradition" (like a baguette only better, in my opinion) from the bakery only to discover it's still warm, for example. Walking past the Notre Dame at night when there's no one there. Cold windy days that make you appreciate the warm spring-like ones. Discovering my favorite Lebanese place is still open at 12:30 at night. Grabbing the last copy of "Le monde" at the newspaper table...I've taken to reading this cover-to-cover at least twice a week and it's one of my favorite parts of living here. If the French want to claim it's the best newspaper in the world, that's fine with me.
On the menu for this next week is getting as much work done as possible...Melissa has friends coming on Tuesday night, and then it's our spring break and I'm off to Dublin, Bristol, and London, visiting a friend in each place. Life is good.
That same day I had three MUN people (who were supposed to be at a conference in the Hague) visiting Paris for the day who were hoping I could show them around (they had never been and so understandably wanted to do the big tourist attractions) and although I was a bit touristed-out and sleep-deprived, I felt like I'd been cooped-up for days in my apartment doing schoolwork so I was more than happy to run around with them and feel like I was doing something. We literally did Paris in a day, hours even, I'm surprised at how much we saw. And there were things I hadn't done before, like I figured out how to find this one bus I like in a different location and we stopped in St-Sulpice church (perhaps better-known, sadly, as the Da Vinci Code church), and also stopped for a café near the école militaire (which faces the Eiffel Tower) in an area I hadn't visited before. At around 4 o'Clock we were by the Louvre (I advised them not to go in if they didn't have time to avoid collapsing in awe, advice they heeded) and I sent them off to Montmartre so they could see the Sacre Coeur before catching their train in the same area, at which point I went home and collapsed on the couch in content exhaustion.
As if to compensate for all the schoolwork I did earlier in the week I spent the weekend doing absolutely nothing for school and instead spending time with Yael and Stevie who I really enjoyed talking to. Stevie left Thursday, though (they are both off now completing their European tour while on break from school), and on Friday Yael and I went to Versailles which I've been wanting to go to, and which was amazing besides the fact that it was a very cold day so the gardens were not quite as pleasant as they might have been. But this was yet another instance here where I've been so glad I took a 17th to beginning 20th century European history class at Berkeley (which had been a relatively random decision). Nothing like writing a whole midterm on the Sun King who "loved war too much" and changed the face of diplomacy in Europe and then seeing the bed where he was born. Pretty cool! In the evening we met up with our friend Pedro (also an MUN kid, technically) who I've known since Freshman year and who is studying in Germany for the semester (in Paris for the weekend with his program). We had a really nice time catching up over dinner and it was great to see another familiar face.
On Saturday we went to the Andy Warhol exhibit that is going on at the Grand Palais that both Yael and I had wanted to see. It was really cool and although I didn't know a whole lot about Warhol at first I felt like I had a pretty good sense of his life and work by the time I left. A lot of his mirror-image-type portraits that are normally found in different museums were put side-by-side which made me feel pretty lucky that I could see them there at the same time. I'm not sure about his idealization of celebrities and business executives, or his use of diamond dust in a few paintings, but it was very interesting nonetheless and definitely worthwhile. Yael left on Saturday night, officially ending my week of familiar faces! It was wonderful to have visitors here, especially because it's then you feel truly like a Paris resident and you realize you know much more than you think you do about where you are.
I decided Sunday during the day was finally the right time to get back to school stuff (considering I had a paper due the next day I hadn't started), but I still made time to meet up with people at a jazz club near Odéon for Song-My's birthday. The music was fantastic and I had a great time. Even though it is usually the case in Berkeley I've made the decision that while I'm here, school cannot be first priority. There's just too much to see and too much to do and I think I learn much more outside of school anyway. It is difficult to find a balance but I think I am getting there.
And in between the SCHOOL v. FUN seesaw there are so many simple pleasures to enjoy (which are always important to be aware of, but in Paris it's that much easier for some reason). Getting a "tradition" (like a baguette only better, in my opinion) from the bakery only to discover it's still warm, for example. Walking past the Notre Dame at night when there's no one there. Cold windy days that make you appreciate the warm spring-like ones. Discovering my favorite Lebanese place is still open at 12:30 at night. Grabbing the last copy of "Le monde" at the newspaper table...I've taken to reading this cover-to-cover at least twice a week and it's one of my favorite parts of living here. If the French want to claim it's the best newspaper in the world, that's fine with me.
On the menu for this next week is getting as much work done as possible...Melissa has friends coming on Tuesday night, and then it's our spring break and I'm off to Dublin, Bristol, and London, visiting a friend in each place. Life is good.
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